Freedom New Mexico President Obama’s visit to Canada was notable for the ever-so-slight undercurrents of uneasiness between two countries that have enjoyed generally amicable relations over the sometimes touchy issue of trade. Obama made foolish comments during the presidential campaign (in the heart of a Rust Belt filled with people and union leaders eager to […]

Freedom New Mexico The final failure of the so-called Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations last month has been described as a crisis in trade policy and even in the headline to a Wall Street Journal editorial, as “the end of free trade.” There’s no question it was disappointing, but it may be that such […]

Freedom New Mexico It’s sad, really. For most of the last century, the Democratic Party, as the most significant advocate of an internationalist perspective in American politics, understood that promoting international trade was a key aspect of being an internationally oriented world power that valued multilateral relations. With its latest action on a proposed trade […]

CNJ staff photo: Liliana Castillo Cousins Leslie Vannatta, left, and McKinzie Davis, 5, browse some jewelery Saturday during Curry County Trade Days at the Curry County Fairgrounds. Davis said she â€œwanted some bling.â€ By Kevin Wilson: CNJ Staff Writer The finish wasn’t perfect for Lee Chaffee, but the price was. A California native, and a […]

By Freedom New Mexico In Tuesday’s Republican presidential panel presentation — to call it a debate is to do serious injustice to a respectable format — on business and economics, most of the candidates reverted to tried-and-true Republican tropes. Almost all of them say they are for low taxes, “reasonable” regulation and reduced government spending. […]

By Freedom Newspapers Frederic Bastiat is credited with saying, “If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.” He knew the best way to keep nations on speaking terms with one another was trade. It’s difficult for a nation to foment distrust of and anger with another nation when the people of both rely on one another […]

By Freedom Newspapers Our support for free trade doesn’t come without caveats — including, obviously, that reasonable safeguards exist to prevent foreign trading partners from dumping unsafe or fraudulent products on the U.S. market. Accurate and honest country-of-origin labeling also is crucial, so consumers can make educated choices. Increased U.S. trade with China is generally […]

By Freedom Newspapers The election of Rafael Correa, an advocate of socialist policies who, naturally, is called a “populist” or “reformer” in most news stories, as president of Ecuador is at least a setback for more open trade. And open trade is the most effective way for Latin America to climb out of poverty. Since […]

By Walter Williams: Syndicated columnist Professors James Gwartney (Florida State University), Richard Stroup (Montana State University) and Dwight Lee (Georgia University), three longtime colleagues of mine, have recently published “Common Sense Economics.” It’s a small book, less than 200 pages, that addresses a serious economist dereliction of duty: making our subject understandable to the ordinary […]

By Walter E. Williams: Columnist There are only a handful of products that Americans import that cannot be produced at home and therefore create jobs for Americans. Let’s look at a few of them. We import cocoa from Ghana and coffee from African and Latin American countries. We import saffron from Spain and India and […]

By Walter Williams: Syndicated columnist Patrick Buchanan’s recent syndicated column titled “New Deal for U.S. Manufacturers” stokes the fires of misunderstanding and panic. Buchanan, my longtime friend, is right about a lot of things, but he’s wrong about trade. First, he laments, “Europeans, Japanese, Canadians and Chinese sell us so much more than they buy […]

Freedom Newspapers The suspension last week of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations — named after the capital of Qatar, where the talks began in 2001 — under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, is a sad commentary on the political systems of the major industrialized countries of the world. It could be […]

By Marlena Hartz : CNJ Staff Writer An ethanol plant that will more than triple New Mexico’s ethanol output plans to operate in Clovis, according to a press release from Gov. Bill Richardson. More than 100 million gallons of ethanol derived from corn will be produced annually at the plant, the release said. The plant […]

By Dave Wagner: CNJ sports writer After sitting through the recent National Football League draft and never hearing his named called, former Clovis High standout Hank Baskett has now been a part of two NFL organizations. Shortly after the draft, Baskett signed as a free agent with the Minnesota Vikings. On Thursday, they traded him […]

Mr. Russell Grider, 55, of Portales died Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005, at Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock. He was born Jan. 22, 1950, in Portales to Wanda and Robert Y. Grider. He was a farmer, rancher and self-taught historian and expert on agricultural law. He was the state ethanol fuels coordinator in the early 1980s. […]

Freedom Newspapers The expectations for the ministerial meetings of the World Trade Organization in Hong Kong last week were fairly low, and by and large those expectations were met. The meeting was not disrupted by the “anti-globalization” protesters who haunt such affairs, and it didn’t end with absolutely nothing to show in terms of an […]

Freedom Newspapers Just as the Gulf Coast struggles to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has tossed another obstacle in the way that makes the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s bungled disaster relief seem like a minor wrinkle. It’s no secret that construction costs are on the rise, and part of the reason is enormous […]

Freedom Newspapers One of mankind’s earliest inventions was agriculture. Growing their food rather than chasing it around or wandering in search of it enabled people to stay in one place. This stability allowed the development of other trappings of civilization: towns, trade, regional culture and government. But agriculture provided the foundation upon which all else […]